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New Brunswick university under fire for anti-gay hiring policy

By Andrew RankinSpecial to the Star

Fri., June 1, 2012

ST. JOHN, N.B.—A Christian university in New Brunswick is under fire for a policy that prevents it from hiring homosexuals.

Crandall University, a small liberal arts school in Moncton, was thrust into the spotlight earlier this week when 22-year-old Jillian Duplessie revoked her acceptance after she learned about the anti-gay rule.

Jillian Duplessie, left, with friend Ainsley Cotter. Duplessie revoked her acceptance at Crandall after she learned about the school's anti-gay hiring rule.

Since then the aspiring teacher has joined forces with a Moncton-based homosexual advocacy group called River of Pride, which is now calling on the government to stop funding the university, which is both publicly and privately subsidized.

“Considering that we live in a country that has legalized gay marriage and has come a long way in accepting homosexuals as normal members of our society, it’s an archaic policy that came as a huge shock to me,” said Duplessie. “It completely caught me off guard. Many of our taxpayers are homosexuals and are paying for a school that they would have no chance of being hired at.”

Crandall University told the Toronto Star on Friday that it was standing by vice-president Seth Crowell’s comments to the CBC in which he defended the hiring policy and said the school was given the right to educate based on its beliefs in 1983.

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“Within that act of the legislature, there’s a sub-clause that says Crandall University — at that point Atlantic Baptist College — has the opportunity to grant degrees to students with a viewpoint that is Christian,” said Crowell. “In the confines of a faith community, of a religious community, it has that jurisdiction.”

The university’s moral code calls on staff to be “sexually pure, reserving sexual intimacy for within a traditional marriage between one man and one woman, and refraining from the use of pornographic materials.”

James LeMesurier, a Saint John lawyer who specializes in employment and labour law, says hiring or firing someone on the basis of their sexual orientation is a clear breach of the province’s Human Rights Code.

“Our Human Rights Code specifically says no employer or person acting on behalf of an employer shall, because of sexual orientation, refuse to employ or to continue to employ any person or to discriminate against any person,” said LeMesurier.

“That is the very fundamental aspect of the Human Rights Code.”

Investigations into and enforcement of Human Rights violations are complaint-driven, so in order for an institution’s policies to be challenged legally, a complaint has to be issued to the province’s human rights commission by the person directly affected.

Citing a 1998 precedent-setting case called Vriend vs. Alberta, LeMesurier said Crandall’s anti-gay policy would probably be struck down in the courts. In that case an Alberta teacher had been fired from a private religious college after disclosing he was homosexual. The teacher argued successfully that his dismissal was discriminatory and in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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Crandall does accept homosexual students. But it takes a no-nonsense approach to sexual intimacy. In the school’s student policy handbook, there is a section entitled “Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour.” It says “sexual intimacy in any non-marital relationship is considered inappropriate and a violation of Christian standards of conduct. Known violation of this standard may result in students being referred for counseling and/or be subject to disciplinary action.”

LeMesurier said he’s perplexed why a university — entrusted to uphold certain fundamental rights such as freedom of expression — would have an anti-gay policy.

“I’m not an academic or a scholar but I would say any organization that uses the term university and prides itself on freedom of expression, freedom of thought, the exchange of different points of view, wouldn’t have a policy that’s been described to me.”

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